By Kenneth C. Rossignol

ST. MARY’S TODAY

ANNAPOLIS — Only 71 votes separated George Owings from the winner in the Calvert County Democratic primary for county commissioner in 1978 and, taking heart from a close race, he ran again for commissioner in 1982.

This time Owings lost by 21 votes and swore to Pat Buehler, his friend in St. Leonard who knew a little about politics, that he would never run again.

Buehler prevailed on Owings to take a shot at the Democratic Central Committee race in 1986, noting that not enough candidates had filed and George would be assured of his first victory.

That first experience in seeking office kept George on his toes and this past week he was sitting in a General Assembly committee hearing room when a fellow delegate tapped him on the shoulder to tell him he had just gotten the big tap from the Governor.

The Viet Nam War Veteran, a proud Marine and four-time elected conservative Democrat member of the House of Delegates from Calvert County, was named a new member of the Governor’s cabinet on Thursday, to take over the post of Secretary of Veterans Affairs on June 1st.

Owings, who was named by Governor William Donald Schaefer to fill out the unexpired term of Delegate Tom Rymer, when Rymer was appointed to the Circuit Court in 1988, ran for full terms beginning in 1990.

Owings was whipping his opponents with such energy that by 2002 nobody bothered to run against him in either the primary or the general election.

Two years ago, the General Assembly approved a new cabinet post of Secretary of Veterans Affairs, to watch out over veterans hospital and nursing home care as well as memorials and cemeteries.

ST. MARY’S TODAY predicted at the time that Owings would be named by Governor Parris Glendening as the first secretary but due to the insistence of Sen. Mike Miller (D. Calvert, Prince George’s), Owings stayed put in the General Assembly.

Governor Bob Ehrlich, upon taking office in January of 2003, selected the popular Charles County Delegate Thomas E. "Tim" Hutchins to be his secretary of veterans affairs and Owings praised the selection of Hutchins last December to his second cabinet post in the administration.

Owings called Hutchins the perfect choice as veterans secretary in 2003, saying that Hutchins is the only guy he went to high school with that is still in the military. Hutchins is in the reserves.

In December, Hutchins was selected by Ehrlich to be his stand-in as State Police Superintendent and once again, it was predicted in these pages that Owings would replace him.

Hutchins was named last week as the permanent Superintendent of the State Police after Edward Norris took a guilty plea to federal corruption charges, the first blemish on the Ehrlich Administration, but for actions taken by Norris when he worked for the Democratic mayor of Baltimore, Martin O’Malley. Norris was not charged with any crimes while he ran the State Police.

Hutchins, who Owings called a straight-arrow has quickly brought the State Police back into high regard with both the public and the rank and file troopers as he seeks to rid the agency of the cronies Norris had brought in from Baltimore and New York.

With as many as a half dozen of Ehrlich’s appointments coming from the floor of the House of Delegates, with Owings leaving a leadership post as majority whip, Ehrlich has succeeded in bringing a long corporate memory of how government operates into his cabinet.

At the same time the Governor has been bringing in administrators who also enjoy good relations with the legislature.

Owings’ pal Tony O’Donnell, the Republican minority whip from Lusby, has an agenda of his own, that of being the Speaker of the House one-day. To that end, O’Donnell is hoping to take over the House one seat at a time, or more if that’s the way the voters see it.

The Republicans hope to pick up the seat that Owings represents in the northern half of Calvert County with Commissioner President David Hale a likely candidate after serving two terms as commissioner.

But it will be up to the Democratic Central Committee now to pick Owings replacement and the Governor is bound to pick the choice of the GOP.

Most prominently mentioned as replacements for Owings are former commissioners Hagner Mister, Barbara Stinnett and Mark Fraser, along with current commissioner Wilson Parran.

Mister and Stinnett are proven vote-getters while Parran would be the second black to be a legislator from Calvert County, with Dr. Aris Allen representing Calvert in the state senate briefly following the death of Sen. Ed Hall.

Fraser, who converted from being a Republican in order to get money out of the state government for North Beach where he was elected mayor in 1998 after serving two terms as Calvert Commissioner, could get the nod but Democrats may not trust him to switch back to the Republicans in order to help the Governor.

The Democratic Central Committee might find Fraser’s Republican background a liability.

Fraser ran for Congress in 1990 as a Republican, losing by a large margin after his drunk driving record was revealed in ST. MARY’S TODAY.

Fraser also had numerous speeding tickets on his record, all of which didn’t go over too well with the GOP voters.

The Democrats may want someone going to Annapolis who can keep the seat instead of attending cocktail parties and spending the night in the slammer.